Chapter Six
Sloane
“No, that’s fine. I don’t mind. I was…I was kind of hoping to go out for a drink with Oliver tonight anyway.” I don’t lie to Zeth. I know he won’t like me going out with Oliver, but he’s not my keeper. He’s never tried to be. And besides, it sounds like he’s got his hands full with this new kid at the gym. He called to tell me he was going to be home late, so he really can’t say anything at all about me heading out after work.
And so he doesn’t. Not a word.
“Zeth? Are you plotting ways to kill my friend?”
“No. Just thinking.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Should I be? Is he gonna try and lay his hands on you?”
“No.”
“Then Oliver Massey is of little concern to me, Sloane.” I can hear the wicked smile in the tone of his voice. “I mean, why the hell would I need to worry about him when you have me, anyway?”
He’s an arrogant bastard sometimes, but he makes me laugh. He also has a really good point. There isn’t a man alive on this planet that can come close to being anywhere near as sexy, thrilling, scary, alluring, or terrifying as him, all in one go. “Good to know your ego’s fighting fit this evening,” I laugh.
“Every part of me is fighting fit, Sloane. Always.”
“Oh, god, I’m going before your modesty overwhelms me and I fall to my knees in worship.”
“I like when you’re on your knees, worshipping me. Or worshipping a certain part of my body, anyway.”
Just hearing him talk about me going down on him makes my body tremble a little. I thought my inexperience in that field would mean I would be terrible at it, but turns out, despite how Zeth has command over me at every other single moment we’re in bed together, I have total power over him when I use my mouth.
As I hang up the call, being wrapped up in him, feeling his hands over me, his mouth on me, my mouth on him… it’s all I can think about.
I don’t think I’ll ever get enough.
My thoughts of Zeth are rudely interrupted three minutes later by my pager—911. An emergency. Great. And there was me thinking I was going to get out of the hospital at a reasonable hour tonight.
******
A drunk driver smashes through the central reservation of the freeway, hits a school bus carrying twenty-three teenagers home from a trip to McCaw Hall, where they were seeing Swan Lake. Five teenagers are dead. Thirteen are injured. The drunk driver went head first through the windscreen of his Tacoma, and the EMTs have reported visible brain matter on the scene.
Who do you help first?
Oliver is shouting something over the bedlam taking place in the emergency room. I can barely hear him, but I’ve gotten pretty damn good at reading lips since I started this gig. He has a kid with internal bleeding who needs an urgent CT scan. He’s taking her upstairs right now. Meanwhile, I’m stuck with the guy on the gurney who, I’m pretty sure, would go up in smoke if he were anywhere near an open flame. Flammable skin, flammable clothing, flammable breath, for crying out loud. By the smell of it, his pungent odor is because he’s been bathing in Jim Beam. And drinking his bath water while he was at it.
I hear Oliver this time. “You gonna be okay down here?” he yells.
I give him a short, curt nod, which is all he needs before he vanishes through the swinging doors toward the elevator with his patient. Somewhere on the ER floor, a girl starts screaming at the top of her lungs. She’s not in pain. I know what agonized screams sound like all too well. No, she’s grieving. Make that six dead from the school bus.
As doctors, we’re not allowed to differentiate between our patients while we’re helping them. They could be serial killers, mass murderers, rapists, drug dealers…we’re not allowed to treat them any differently than we would if we were treating any other civilian. That’s not to say staying calm is easy, though. And it sure as hell isn’t easy to refrain from cursing them as you assess the damage to their bodies.
“Fucking asshole,” I growl, unwinding the temporary bandaging the paramedics have put around the guy’s head. He moans something, maybe in pain, and I nearly drop the shard of his skull that falls out of the packing material. Holy shit. They weren’t wrong about the brain matter. The guy has a two-inch wide hole in his head, and I’m holding the missing piece of his cranium in my hand, complete with scalp and hair.
A long time ago, I remember when the very sight would have turned me green and had me vomiting in the intern’s bathroom. Now, the piece of this guy I’m holding in my hand is nothing more than a broken part of a machine that I have to fix.
Hours later—hours, and hours and hours—I emerge from the operating room, feeling rather pleased with myself. Not only did I manage to fix the hole in the driver’s head, but I also had to think fast and mend his internal bleeding. Jerk didn’t deserve the time we spent on him, perhaps, but hey. At the end of the day, it’s not my job to judge people. It’s my job to make sure they’re alive so someone else can in a court of law.
When I hit the locker room, Massey is waiting for me with a grin on his face. “How’s your brother?” I ask.
“He’s stable and conscious. Hence the shit eating grin I’m wearing right now. Time to celebrate.“
Relief floods me when I hear Oliver’s news about his brother. I’ve been thinking about him constantly, wondering if we did enough to guarantee his recovery. “That’s amazing, Ol. Thank fuck for that, huh? But as for celebrating… once again, we’re finishing work after the bars have closed. Looks like we’re gonna need another rain check on that drink.”
“Nuh-uh. You’re not getting out of it that easy, Romera.”
“Unless you’re planning on drinking the swabbing alcohol, which I highly do not recommend, then I’m afraid we have no other choice.” Truth be told, I’m exhausted now. Bed is sounding like an amazing option.
Oliver grins at me some more, sliding his hand into his backpack and pulling out a bottle of red wine. “I have another one of these,” he says. “Just in case. You and me, we’re going up to the roof and we’re not coming down until this is empty.”
I’m weary right down to my very bones, but I can tell just from looking at him that Oliver is wired. He’s clearly right: I’m not getting out of it that easily.
“All right, fine. But I have to make sure I’m home before the sun comes up, okay?”
“Why? Your boyfriend have you on curfew now?” Oliver says this jestingly, but there’s a bite to his voice.
“Of course not. I’m just being considerate.” And, of course, if Zeth wakes up and I’m not home in bed beside him, he’s going to assume I was kidnapped by some of his old friends and I’m in very grave danger. That would be a very bad turn of events. He would tear this city apart and then set it on fire looking for me.
Oliver just shrugs his shoulders. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
Up on the roof, memories hit me one after the other—all the times my father brought me up here with Alexis to watch the snow fall. I’ve been up here many times since, but every single time, this happens. My dad, Alexis and I, all holding hands, necks craning back, gentle snowflakes falling onto our faces, sticking to our eyelashes. There’s no snow falling tonight, though. It’s too warm. The skies are overcast, but the clouds are heavy with rain instead. Shame we can’t see the stars.
“Better get this show on the road, Romera,” Oliver laughs. “Looks like we might get drenched if we take too long.”
“So basically, you want to get drunk as fast as possible? Am I understanding you clearly? Just so we’re on the same page.”
Walking over to the very edge of the roof, Oliver sits himself down, legs dangling over the edge into the void. He removes one of the bottles from his bag and holds it out to me. “You know me so well.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a very smart man. Speaking of which, kudos to you for remembering to get twist-off caps this time.” The last time I drank wine with Olly, we ended up stealing a butter knife from the canteen and shoving the cork down into the bottle. Suffice it to say, we both ended up covered in red wine, and our glasses were mostly filled with fragments of cork.
“I learned my lesson, obviously.” Oliver takes out the other bottle of wine from his bag, and I realize the one he just handed to me is exactly that: mine. Neither of us have glasses, so we pop open the bottles, chink them together and drink straight from the bottle.
“We’re so classy,” I laugh.
“We’re under a lot of pressure. If it means that we have to drink like hobos in order to unwind, then so be it, right?”
“Right.”
I’ve nearly finished my bottle, feeling very sideways and most definitely drunk, when the sky opens up. The force of the raindrops as they hit the hospital roof is awe-inspiring. The sound of it roars in my ears as Oliver slumps to lie on his back, arms stretched out wide, his bottle of Malbec still gripped tightly in his right hand. “Wooohooo!” he hollers. “We’re alive, Dr. Romera. We are fucking alive.” Grabbing hold of me, he pulls me down so that I’m lying beside him in the torrential downpour, his words resonating inside my head.
I am alive. I am alive. After everything that happened, I somehow made it through to the other side. Even more miraculously, so did Zeth. I have a lot to be grateful for. I’m thick with emotion and soaked to the bone when the rain stops. Tiredness seems to hit Oliver; one second he’s telling me about a procedure he perfected earlier when he was working on one of the school bus girls, and then the next he’s scrambling to his feet on unsteady legs, telling me he has to go home. Immediately.
“You gonna throw up, mister?”
“Hell, no! When have you ever seen Oliver Massey throw up from alcohol?”
Yeah, that’s actually true. I never have seen him sick from drinking too much. Never even seen him drunk at all, for that matter. He’s most certainly a little worse for wear now, though. The giveaway is that he’s referring to himself in the third person. I smile up at him, shivering. “Then why are you suddenly so desperate to leave? You gave me so much shit for never hanging out with you and then the next thing I know you’re bolting.”
He takes in a deep breath and blows it out quickly, scrubbing his hands through his wet hair. “I have to go because I’m about to try and kiss you. And your boyfriend knows people who can have me killed. Right?”
Oh. Oh, no. I can feel my smile turning sad. “Ah, yeah…. If you did that, Zeth wouldn’t be hiring someone else to kill you. I’m pretty sure he’d do it himself.”
“Great.”
“I’m not being a bitch, Ol. It’s just what would happen.”
“I know. I just…” Oliver scrunches up his face, closing his eyes. “Fuck it. Do you want me to kiss you?” Before I can react, before I can shake my head and tell him no, Oliver saves me. “Oh shit. Don’t even answer that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I thought nothing would change. I thought I could ignore it. I thought hanging out would be the same. It’s not. I just...I gotta go.” He picks up his jacket and flings it over his shoulder. “You wanna come down with me now?”
I can tell he doesn’t want me to. I can tell he just wants to run away. “No, that’s okay. I’m just gonna sit here and—” Freeze to death? Shiver so violently that my teeth grind into dust? Anything but have to bid you an awkward farewell downstairs in the parking lot. I love Oliver to death, but it’s pretty clear to me that things can never be as they once were between us. There’s no going back. That makes me suddenly, overwhelmingly very sad.
“Okay, Romera. Well make sure you get home safe, okay? Make sure you catch a cab.”
“I will. Good night.” I tuck my chin into the crook of my arms, hugging myself as I wait for him to go. I’m ridiculously cold by the time I head back inside myself. My clothes make wet slapping sounds as I kick out of them and toss them on the locker room floor.